Tag Archives: Made for Television

Capsules

CAPSULE: KILLDOZER (1974)

3 Comments

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Jerry London

FEATURING: Clint Walker, Carl Betz, Neville Brand, James Wainwright, Robert Urich, James A. Watson Jr.

PLOT: Construction workers on a remote island inadvertently unearth a meteor containing a malevolent spirit from beyond the stars, which proceeds to possess a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer and stalk the men.

Still from Killdozer (1974)

COMMENTS: We rely on our machines, but we don’t trust them. They function in ways that produce the illusion of sentience, but most of us can’t begin to understand how they work. Particularly unsettling are the ones that we operate like beasts of burden. They are faceless, eyeless mammoths that dwarf us, and the damn things move. The Car… Duel… Christine… big soulless behemoths that girdle the globe clearly tap into a raw, soft spot in our primal brains. So it only stands to reason that a particularly powerful beast – like, I don’t know, say… a bulldozer – would prove especially stimulating to our amygdalas.

The title, therefore, does a lot of the work. Killdozer is a magnificent portmanteau, forcing a chuckle at the pure chutzpah of the enterprise. Like Snakes on a Plane or Sharknado, it promises delightfully absurd levels of bloodlust and mechanized mayhem. Alas, it ultimately cannot deliver on that promise, and doesn’t really seem to want to.

The possessed crawler would seem to have a lot going for it as an unstoppable killing machine: it’s very big, it’s made entirely of impenetrable metal, and it can level anything in its path. One thing that the possessed earthmover does not have in its arsenal is speed, and that probably results in the greatest disconnect between terror and reasonable fear. Lacking even the handling and acceleration of a Roomba, a grisly fate at the hands (treads?) of the Killdozer seems eminently avoidable. Perhaps that’s why it spends so much of the film biding its time, watching from the underbrush or peering down from lofty hills, somehow clothed in stealth despite being enormous and bright yellow and spewing black smoke and deafening noise.

Does that sound dumb? Well, the Killdozer turns out to be well-matched against its prey. The cadre of construction workers frequently runs directly into harm’s way. One dives for cover inside a metal pipe. Another stares into the vehicles headlights like a deer, waiting patiently for the lumbering killer to reach him. And leading the way for humanity is Clint Walker, with his modeling-clay voice and taciturn visage. We’re told that he is suffering from mortal blows to his credibility and self-assurance thanks to bouts with the bottle. Ultimately, though, he displays about as much personality as his opponent.

Perhaps most surprising – and to the film’s great detriment – is the extreme earnestness with which it treats this remarkable situation. No postmodern irony for Killdozer. It’s deadly serious, this tale of an enormous piece of construction equipment gone mad. Which is extraordinary, because if you can’t flash a wry smile at a movie called Killdozer, what else have you got?

So Killdozer doesn’t have much to offer (except possibly as promotional material for Caterpillar, should they ever wish to extol the destructive power of their products). As a title, it’s a cute punchline. But as a movie, it’s probably best left buried.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Despite having a place in the bad movie vernacular, Killdozer is really a crushing bore of a film that never lives up to the cheesiness its title and premise promise. The film is very slow going, even more slow moving than the titular bulldozer itself.”  – Jon Condit, Dread Central

(This movie was nominated for review by James Mendenhall. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE POINT (1971)

1 Comment

366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Fred Wolf

FEATURING: Voices of Ringo Starr, Mike Lookinland, Lennie Weinrib,

PLOT: The Pointed Village is going about its business, as it has for as long as anyone can remember, with pointed people making pointed buildings and pointed goods, until Oblio, a round-headed boy, is born.

Still from The Point (1971)

COMMENTS: I can tell you from experience that The Point is a good way to get on the path toward discovering, discussing, and dissecting weird movies. During my formative years, I watched it again and again (though at the time, I must admit that I was frightened by one of the sequences, therefore using the fast forward button regularly). As with so much of what 366 reviews, in my less aware moments I’d regard this Nilssonian flight of fancy as “normal,” but it is in actuality a strange combination of children’s cartoon and beatnik daydream.

In fine musical style, we are introduced to the “Land of Point”: more specifically, the Pointed Village, the town where everbody’s got ’em (and couldn’t do without ’em). Couched in the framing story of a father (voiced by Ringo Starr at his most paternal) reading to his son (Mike Lookinland), The Point concerns Oblio (also Lookinland), a boy born without a pointed head. Oblio makes the mistake of making a fool of the Count’s bully son in a game of Triangle Toss. When the defeated youth complains to his powerful father, a sham trial results in Oblio’s banishment to the “Pointless Forest.” Oblio’s adventures (with his trusty dog Arrow by his side) bring him in contact with a magical assortment of guides—beatnik Rock Man, capitalist-extraordinaire Leaf Man, the bouncing Jelly Women, among others—and he learns that nothing is without a point.

Nilsson’s concept album is primarily a vehicle for his catchy and charming songs concerning love, life, and death. Fred Wolf’s movie alternates between straight-up story (marked by Starr’s narration) and song animations. This coexistence is impressively seamless, as the tunes bring Oblio’s contemplations to life. Some of them are heady things for a small boy—one of the things that kept me coming to this, aside from my limited video menu at the time, was that it didn’t speak down to me—and in its post-psychedelic way, everything has a fresh, oddball feel to it. Watching it again for the first time in decades, I also noticed the many odd things the filmmakers got up to: drug culture (the Rock Man character, both as a whole, and particularly with the line, “us stone[d] folks are everywhere”), anti-capitalism (the ridiculousness of the “leaf manufacturing” Leaf Man), right down to the strangely vulvic foliage where the fat, naked, jolly Jelly Women cavort mischievously.

With its minimalist-but-quirky animation (and gloriously pointo-gothic-brutalist architecture), mental digressions (contemplating a tear’s life cycle through an ancient whale), and moments of Shakespearean grandeur (the villainous Count could be Iago’s closest friend), The Point hits a lot of great notes, particularly for a primetime-broadcast, made-for-TV cartoon. That such a quirky little movie like this slipped past the watchful eye of the normality police makes it all the more laudable.

Previously available on DVD, MVD Rewind released The Point on Blu-ray in 2020. Although full of extra features and billed as “The Ultimate Edition,” many hardcore fans were disappointed that it lacks the original Dustin Hoffman broadcast narration (Hoffman’s contract was for a one-time performance, and subsequent broadcasts and home video releases used different narrators).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Whether Wolf, best known for his work on The Flintstones, took inspiration from Dr. Seuss, I couldn’t say, but there’s a similar sensibility at work in terms of the quasi-surrealistic look of the thing… It’s that unique combination of the expectedly childlike, the surprisingly adult, and the just-plain weird that makes The Point! work as well for me now as it did in grade school when I’d play the album over and over again, flipping the pages of the illustrated booklet all the while.” -Kathy Fennessy, Seattle Film Blog

(This movie was nominated for review by Jeffery, who commented “My favorite scene in it is the one with the fat ladies.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980)

1 Comment

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Günter Lamprecht, , ,

PLOT: After four years in prison, wife-murderer Franz Bieberkopf is released into Weimar Germany; he tries to go straight, but with no means of employment, he soon returns to the criminal underworld, with tragic results.

Still from Berlin Alexanderplatz (epilogue) (1980)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: We’ve toyed with the idea of considering self-contained TV miniseries as “movies” for classification purposes before; Berlin Alexanderplatz, a celebrated masterpiece of world cinema from an auteur with eccentric tendencies but nothing on the List, makes perhaps the best case for loosening our criteria—especially since the result would be classified as “apocrypha” rather than canon. A miniseries adapting Alfred Döblin’s modernist novel, first broadcast on German television, Alexanderplatz is a fifteen hour dive into an enigmatic character told through a fluid mix of straight drama, melodrama, poetic monologue, and surrealism. The two-hour capstone installment, a frenzied passage dubbed “My Dream of the Dream of Franz Biberkopf by Alfred Döblin, An Epilogue,” could well stand alone as a weird movie classic—but it can’t be appreciated without first seeing the thirteen hours that came before.

COMMENTS: Oddly, it was the second episode that sold me on Berlin Alexanderplatz. The first introduced our protagonist, Franz, newly released from prison after a four year stay, briefly suffering from disabling agoraphobia until a friendly Jew tells him an obscure parable, visiting—and raping—an old acquaintance, and finally swearing an oath to go strait. It was strange stuff, setting up intriguing possibilities, but I was not all-in just yet.

That second episode was, in a way, comparatively ordinary. Desperate for a job, with legitimate employment in 1920s Berlin rare in even for non-felons, Franz agrees to put on a swastika armband—reluctantly—and sell newspapers for the newly-formed Nazi party. This decision causes him trouble when a fellow vendor, who happens to be Jewish, confronts him, followed by an old friend who’s now a dedicated Marxist. Franz, who is proud to be German but has nothing against the Jews (or anyone), eventually quits the job, but not before the gang of Communists accost him in a bar. He almost smooth talks his way out of the confrontation, but can’t resist responding to their taunts by singing a Nationalist song as a response to their chorus of the “Internationale.” Angered, they back him into a corner. In a frightened fury, one man against a gang, he is forced to raise a chair to defend himself.

It was at this point that I realized that I’d gone from simply following Franz’s story to rooting for the poor reprobate. Fassbinder brought me, slowly, to sympathize with a killer, a rapist, a pimp, and a Nazi Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980) →

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: COINCOIN AND THE EXTRA-HUMANS (2018)

2 Comments

Coincoin et les z’inhumains

Recommended

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , , Alexia Depret

PLOT: Four years after the events of Li’l Quinquin, Quinquin (now Coincoin) has grown up and joined a far-right political group, while Commandant Van der Weyden investigates a mysterious black tar that is falling from the sky and a plague of doubles showing up in town.

Still from CoinCoin and the Extra-Humans (2018)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: If Li’l Quinquin was worthy of consideration, then his equally odd brother Coincoin must be, too. Too bad we can’t mash Quinquin and Coincoin together into a single seven-plus-hour festival of Gallic strangeness.

COMMENTS: A lot has changed in the Côte D’Opale since we last visited Quinquin; and yet, nothing has really changed. Sure, Quinquin is now a strapping teenager who goes by “Coincoin” (like so much else in this world, the change in nomenclature is left a mystery). His old love interest, Eve, is now into girls. The outsiders are now undocumented Africans living in shantytowns on the outskirts of Calais instead of suburban Muslims. And no one worries about dead bodies found inside cows anymore; they’re more concerned with the black goo that’s falling from the heavens, usually splattering the cops at inconvenient times. But though the case may have changed, the tic-ridden Commandant Van Der Weyden and his foul-toothed assistant Carpentier are still on it. Their cruiser still tilts up on two wheels (in fact, it does so much more often). The townsfolk are still quaintly thoughtless and provincial. And there still is no resolution or logical explanation as to why this quiet French outpost is the locus of so much metaphysical weirdness. Most importantly, the project feels exactly the same: eccentric, tone-shifting, with little surreal jaunts off the beaten path, like Season 1 “” set at an out-of-the-way beach resort.

As for the weird bits: there’s a scene where CoinCoin can’t figure out how to kiss Christ, some blackface, a man attacked by a gull, and “clown” clones, not to mention the bizarre alien invasion (if that’s what it is) and a surprise at the end that I won’t spoil. Few of the comic bits—which stray close to border of anti-comedy—are funny in themselves; they only succeed through a relentless repetition that demonstrates Dumont’s sincere commitment to his style. Repetition is itself often the meta-joke: Carpentier does his “two-wheel” trick so often that his Captain complains it’s getting annoying (then continues to do it for several more episodes); doppelgangers are switched in mid-conversation so that conversations repeat themselves over and over and over. Meanwhile, Coincoin’s own plotline (now clearly secondary to the antics of the gendarmes) is almost entirely a realistic coming-of-age story; the boy is concerned with girls, mischief, and peer pressure, oblivious to what increasingly looks to be a modern Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style crisis until the events of the fourth episode force him to pay attention.

It’s hard to explain why Quinquin/Coincoin‘s blend of low-key absurdism, social awkwardness, grotesquerie, political swipes, and rural drama works; it seems like it shouldn’t. But it captures the Western world’s current mood of ambivalent anxiety as well as anything out there. An apocalypse is coming—maybe—and it’s actually sort of funny—a little.

Although it’s mostly of interest to those who saw the first miniseries, there’s no reason you can’t jump straight into this sequel first if you like.

The four episodes of Coincoin and the Extra-Humans are currently screening as a single long feature at the French Institute Alliance Française in New York City through July 28 and at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on July 26 only as part of the Boston French Film Festival. Lil Quinquin played Netflix briefly after its release, but is now streaming on the Criterion Channel. That seems like the likely eventual landing spot for Coincoin once its brief theatrical run concludes. We’ll keep you updated.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Dumont hasn’t been a comedy director for very long but it now seems impossible to imagine a world without his endearingly ridiculous sense of humor and his genuine love for his affably weird protagonists. Dumont’s comedies are a gift we were never promised and now they’re something we should never have to live without.”–Scout Tafoya, RogerEbert.com (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: LOOK WHAT’S HAPPENED TO ROSEMARY’S BABY (1976)

5 Comments

DIRECTED BY: Sam O’Steen

FEATURING: Stephen McHattie, , , Patty Duke, Broderick Crawford

PLOT: Picking up where the slightly more famous original left off, we join young Adrian/Andrew as his mother takes him from his Devil-cult overseers across the country; reaching manhood, the hour of reckoning approaches when the world may see the rebirth of Satan.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Look What’s Happened… is utterly ridiculous, to be sure, but with nothing more than the inherent camp to be found in a ’70s made-for-TV movie (and one that’s a sequel to an established classic, at that), it is “merely” an amusing, benign curio for those lucky enough to find it.

COMMENTS: In case you were wondering, that pantomime fellow behind the hippie chicks in the still is the young man conceived and born in Roman Polanski‘s more famous Rosemary’s Baby. The actor on the stage strutting his stuff is none other than this Fantasia’s special guest, Stephen McHattie, in one of his earliest onscreen appearances. McHattie introduced the movie—still mostly unseen and unknown after all these years—at the 2019 special screening at the Fantasia Film Festival. Let me tell you the story.

Roman and Minnie Castevet make for somewhat inept guardians, as they allow Rosemary to escape with young Andrew (born Adrian, and now age eight) into the world. A violent storm picks up when they leave the Satanic cultist’s lair, and they take refuge in a small storefront used as a synagogue. Rosemary feels that the boy is being sought out, and demands that the assembled Jewish men “Pray! Pray! Pray!” in an attempt to block the probing psychic eye of Minnie Castevet (whose parallels with a stereotypical Jewish grandmother border on the “uncanny”). Rosemary gets dumped somewhere in Nevada after her boy nearly kills some kids for teasing him, and is shuffled off onto a bus… with no driver(!!!). Andrew/Adrian is raised by a hooker in a a gimmicky “Castle Casino.” And… my goodness, I’m feeling like an idiot relaying this plot. Some later highlights: a self-driving car, a big black cake with a pentagram of birthday candles, a hospital for the criminally insane, and much, much more.

The screening was made even more special by the inclusion of mid-’70s advertisements spliced into the feature (including one for the bitchin’ roadster that Adrian drives around pointlessly). It was also preceded by McHattie’s film debut, “Star Spangled Banner”, an antiwar short that won a prize at Cannes back in 1970 (?). It impressed me greatly—I appreciated the irony of a young Canadian actor standing in for a doomed US soldier. With the titular song played in the background (as covered by The Grass Roots, a late 1960s folk-rock band), a young GI runs from enemy fire while quick clips of home, youth, love, and innocence are interspliced with his panic. Hokey-sounding, to be sure, but strangely moving to watch. I just wish I could find it again.

But it was not a night for politics: it was a night for the audience, along with one of Canada’s veteran character actors, to see an impressively awful movie together for the first time. McHattie quipped afterwards, “That looks like it was two-hundred years old.” For all its crumminess, there was an earnestness to Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby, and at the very least, McHattie’s career survived the hit. He’s been in more than 200 roles since.

WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:

“Connoisseurs of bad movies will likely find this misconceived project a worthwhile hunt, especially given its strange period details (imagining Adrien as a ‘60s hippie rocker despite the ‘70s setting) and the manner in which the story pushes a plot along through sequences that can generously be called anti-horror. “–Nick Allen, RogerEbert.com

Q & A AUDIO